Sixteen more people who were diagnosed with Covid-19 have died, the Department of Health has said.
There have now been 1,561 Covid-19 related deaths here.
There have also been 51 new cases of the virus confirmed, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 24,251.
Dublin has the highest number of cases, with 11,759 cases, amounting to 49% of all confirmed cases.
Kildare has the second highest amount, with 1,379 cases (6%), followed by Cork with 1,372 (5%).
In a statement the National Public Health Emergency Team said that as of midnight last night 295,626 Covid-19 tests had been carried out.
36,818 tests were carried out over the past week and of these 932 were positive, giving a positivity rate of 2.5%.
There are 828 cases associated with meat processing plants, an increase of 328 on the number of cases given last week.
The Department of Health also said there are 16 clusters in meat plants, an increase of four on last week.
The Chief Medical Officer, Dr Tony Holohan, said that by his calculations this was the fourth day in a row that the number of new cases was less than 100.
He said many of these cases were occurring in specific settings - either in residential care facilities or occupational settings - rather than in the community at large.
Dr Holohan said the positivity rate has also fallen in line with the total number of cases.
He said this was all consistent with the view that we have arrived at the right time to ease restrictions.
However Dr Holohan said we need to keep our vigilance up because a change in behaviour that could lead to an increase in the reproductive rate would not take long to cause the number to jump up to a level that would create a challenge.
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In relation to reports that employers had received employees test results, Dr Holohan said employers should not get results before patients.
RTÉ News revealed today that in some cases, where mass screening of workforces takes place, the results were supplied to the companies before workers were informed of the results.
The Chief Medical Officer said "individuals should get those results from the people who ordered those test results. That's an important principle" an he said "it's important that we uphold and are seen to uphold the principal of confidentiality in the way results are handled".
He said "there are circumstances in which the principle of confidentiality won't always be uphold or either appropriate to uphold" particularly in settings where you have people who might lack capacity or where there are other extenuating circumstances".
He said "if there are circumstances in which it was necessary or did happen for reasons of feeding results back to individuals where that wasn't observed, then we want to know and understand that."
Dr Holohan also said that the continuing advice to employers is to facilitate people to work from home, saying that would reduce the amount of workplace contact.
Dr Holohan said we should avoid meetings taking place in the workplace environment and use video conferencing as much as possible.
He added there is support and guidance available from the HSE and Health and Safety Authority for workplaces where that is not possible.
Dr Holohan said there is no hard and fast rule that applies to workplace settings, which he said have to return to economic activity, and we have to try to make that as safe as we possibly can.
Chief Clinical Officer with the HSE Dr Colm Henry said "confidentiality is a very important principle in medical practice, but it's not immutable and there are certain exceptional circumstances that doctors will breach confidentiality.
He gave the example of someone who was "quite contagious with active TB and was coughing and disseminating the bug and wasn't adhering to treatment" and were people in public might breach confidentiality because there was a greater good and a greater danger than that breach of confidentiality.
He said "public health departments have to make decisions very quickly sometimes in large outbreaks where speed is of the essence and where they have to make decisions based on the danger or risk of further dissemination of the virus".
He said what we've learned from this pandemic "is how much we rely on them to make quick decisions rapidly to manage outbreaks, whether they be meat plants, nursing homes, residential care settings or acute hospitals and they must act quickly and resolutely to do that and that's what you would expect them to do."
Call to cancel private hospital contract
Fianna Fáil's Health Spokesperson Stephen Donnelly has said we are looking at the very serious reduction in healthcare capacity in the coming months to extend into years, if Covid-19 remains with us.
He told RTÉ's Six One that this will need innovation, and that in addition to the Sláintecare reforms, other measures were urgently needed.
He called for the cancellation of the private hospital contract, which he said was not working for anyone.
He said the National Treatment Purchase Fund should be supercharged to get public patients treated.
He also said telemedicine, which is being used all over the world, is not being used here.
Mr Donnelly said capacity is not being used, and that seven in every ten beds are currently empty, operating theatres are not being used to capacity and outpatient appointments are way down.
He said that given the additional pressure Covid is causing, all of our healthcare assets must be used as much as possible.
Mr Donnelly said the reality is that this is not happening in the private system. He said there is also a situation where public healthcare money will be used to treat private patients in private hospitals by private consultants, when insurance companies can pay for that and should pay for that.
Mr Donnelly said it is unclear to him and to doctors across the system why €150 million is being paid each month for 2,000 beds, when only three in ten of these are being used.
He said public healthcare money needs to be protected to care for public patients, and that we have a tried and tested method in the National Treatment Purchase Fund.
